Guest Editorial: Anointment and Appointment in the SD-07 Special Election

Stanfield served on the CD2 Democratic Committee from 2017 until 2022. He currently represents York County on the CD1 Democratic Committee

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*Editorial writers are not employed by Virginia Scope.

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Editorial: Anointment and Appointment in the SD7 Special Election

By Josh Stanfield

Stanfield served on the CD2 Democratic Committee from 2017 until 2022. He currently represents York County on the CD1 Democratic Committee. 

For the past several months, the citizens of Hampton Roads have endured a deluge of political ads reminding us of the threats to democracy, of our duty to oppose anti-democratic political candidates and movements, and of the importance of electing Democrats as the only way to secure our democratic way of life.

Yet if you pull back the curtain - just a little bit - you’ll see Hampton Roads Democratic leaders engaging in anti-democratic political shenanigans in full view, without shame, seemingly oblivious or indifferent to their own hypocrisy. This week’s anointment and appointment of Virginia Beach Councilman Aaron Rouse as the Democratic nominee in the SD7 special election, an operation that would make Harry Byrd proud, is the most recent example. 

Calling the Special Election

Congresswoman-elect Kiggans, in her preparation to head to D.C. to represent Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, officially resigned from the State Senate last Tuesday according to Sarah Rankin at the Associated Press. Confusion about whether Governor Glenn Youngkin or State Senator Louise Lucas, president pro tempore of the Senate, had the authority to set the date of the special election in Senate District 7 morphed into a bipartisan deal on Tuesday between the two on the election terms. As both writs indicate, the special election will take place on January 10, 2023, and the last day for candidates to file is November 21, 2022 at 5:00pm.

Remember that when former Delegate Jay Jones resigned last year in mid-December - and then Speaker Filler-Corn called a special election for January 11, 2022 - the party held its nominating contest December 21, 2021. Delegate Jackie Glass dominated the “firehouse caucus” and was easily elected in the January general election in Norfolk.

Now note that both the Governor and Senator Lucas chose to issue the writs last Tuesday. Once the writs were issued, Virginia Code § 24.2-510(5) required the Democrats in the district to select a nominee within five days, as there would be no state-run primary process for the special election.

Why the Governor and Senator Lucas decided to issue their writs this week - instead of waiting to give candidates and parties more time - remains a mystery to the public. 

Ignoring the DPVA Party Plan

Once the Governor and Senator Lucas issued their writs, the clock started ticking on the political parties to choose their nominees. The Party Plan of the Democratic Party of Virginia governs the party’s operations, and it addresses nominating processes in special elections.

Section 7.2 of the Party Plan, added relatively recently in the party’s history, requires the use of a primary for General Assembly nominations. But it also allows, in the case of a special election, for the appropriate committee to nominate by caucus or convention.

Section 7.1 grants the nominating committee the power to prescribe the method of nominating candidates. Section 7.4 tells us how to create the nominating committee, in this case for SD7, and Section 7.5 describes the weighted votes on that committee.

According to VPAP, over 96% of SD7 voters live in Virginia Beach, and the rest live in Norfolk. According to the Party Plan, the nominating committee would consist of Norfolk Democratic Committee Chair Charlie Stanton (if he lives in SD7) and Virginia Beach Democratic Committee Chair Lindsey Nathaniel (who does live in SD7). Based on the vote weighting in Section 7.5, in effect, Lindsey Nathaniel would control the nominating committee, as well as the terms and dissemination of the Call to Caucus.

That didn’t happen. Instead, CD2 Committee Chair Sandra Brandt ran the opaque process, issued the Call to Caucus, and required candidates to submit materials to her. 

Some prospective candidates received this email from the Virginia Beach Democratic Committee chair, making it clear that the CD2 Chair was controlling the process:

Nothing in the Virginia Beach Democratic Committee or CD2 Democratic Committee bylaws authorizes this circumvention of the Party Plan by the CD2 Chair. When Delegate Kelly Convirs-Fowler, the only elected Democrat in the General Assembly from Virginia Beach, inquired as to why the CD2 Chair was handling the nomination details contrary to the Party Plan, she couldn’t get a response.

A Disturbing Call to Caucus

A little later on Wednesday, the Virginia Beach Democratic Committee sent out an email blast with a link to the Call to Caucus for the SD7 special election. The Call to Caucus, distributed on November 16, required that prospective candidates file their paperwork and filing fee by the next afternoon, November 17 at 4:00 pm. The Call to Caucus also set the date of the caucus: Saturday, November 19th from 10:30 am until 2:30 pm.

While such insanely short notice for a nomination contest is problematic, remember that Virginia law forces the parties to choose their nominees within five days of the issuance of the writ calling for the election.

The Call to Caucus required candidates to file a Declaration of Candidacy form, alongside a $5,000 filing fee, to the CD2 Chair Sandra Brandt.

Setting unreasonably high filing fees for caucuses is a classic means of excluding potential candidates. Particularly given that the filing fee for a state-run primary for state Senate is 2% of the salary of the position - less than $500. 

The only polling place in Virginia Beach (comprising over 96% of the district’s voters) was at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Rev. R. Perez Gatling, the pastor of that church, was part of an extensive list of people endorsing Aaron Rouse upon his campaign launch on November 14.

Delegate Convirs-Fowler raised the obvious objection to holding a caucus at a church whose pastor had already endorsed a candidate in the race. She was unsuccessful in getting answers, including answers concerning how much the party was paying to rent the polling venues. 

Two Candidates File, One Candidate Appointed

At the moment, both former Virginia Beach Delegate Cheryl Turpin and Councilman Rouse have filed for next year’s state senate race in the newly drawn Senate District 22. Turpin, who ran against Jen Kiggans in 2019 in Senate District 7 and lost by less than 1%, is therefore an obvious potential candidate in the special election. Indeed, she announced last week that she intended to run. There are other people in the district who were considering running for the nomination in the special election too - until the terms of the Call to Caucus were released.  

Turpin, despite being abroad visiting family and returning to Virginia this weekend, was able to electronically file the required paperwork to Sandra Brandt by the deadline in the Call to Caucus. Yet in lieu of the $5,000 filing fee, she submitted a letter, the end of which addresses the fee:

Aaron Rouse presumably also filed the required paperwork and paid the $5,000 filing fee. 

CD2 Chair Sandra Brandt, less than 20 minutes after the 4:00pm deadline to file, declared that “Cheryl Turpin has not met the requirement outlined in the Call to Caucus under the section Candidate Filing for filing a check for $5,000. Therefore, your filing is considered incomplete.”

As a result, the election was canceled, and Councilman Rouse was appointed the nominee without a single Democrat casting a vote. 

Potential Litigation

As reported in the Virginia Scope, Turpin has reached out to lawyer and former Democratic Party of Virginia Chair Paul Goldman to explore her options. Goldman told me earlier today: “I am unaware of any federal case that has upheld a $5,000 mandatory fee to get on the ballot for an office with a salary under $20,000 a year. They ought to read the 'white primary' cases which were explicitly intended to prevent issues like this."

There is case law on the question of excessive filing fees; see, for example, the 1972 SCOTUS case Bullock v. Carter. Yet it’s not quite clear if, when, and where a lawsuit will be filed - and whether or not they would also challenge the state statute that imposed the five day timeline on the party to nominate in the first place. It’s also not clear if other SD7 voters would join the lawsuit, as case law suggests they may have standing too.

The Republican Connection

Aaron Rouse announced with a photo and list of endorsements capturing the who’s who of Hampton Roads Democratic Party elite (not to mention NOVA Senators Saslaw and Surovell) on Monday, November 14. 

The next day, in what Virginia Mercury reporter Graham Moomaw called “an unexpected display of bipartisanship,” Governor Youngkin and Senator Lucas issued writs to call the special election. What explains this surprising bipartisanship? One running theory amongst local Democrats concerns a $10,000 contribution from Councilman Rouse’s PAC to “Friends of the Elephant.”

Friends of the Elephant is a Republican PAC based in Virginia Beach that, for a little over a decade, has been funding Republicans at all levels of Virginia government (including Jen Kiggans). Here’s just a taste of politicians to whom the PAC has funneled contributions:

So why is Aaron Rouse one of their top three donors? Does this “in” with Republicans explain why the Governor was quick to work with Senator Lucas on setting an election date?

Readers familiar with Hampton Roads politics, especially south of the James River, might recognize the uniquely bipartisan political machinery usually at play. In so many ways, there’s no team “red” or team “blue” - there’s team “green” with money on the mind, always able to transcend partisan politics if the price is right.

Voters Cut Out

When it comes to the people of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, most of this political intrigue is background noise at best - they’re busy living their lives. Inherent in this reality is a quasi-masochistic trust we put in political leaders to act in good faith, to take the process seriously, and to generally try to be fair. 

For the rank-and-file Democratic voters of Senate District 7, well, they don’t get a say in who will be their nominee. They’ve been totally cut out of the process. And there’s plenty of reason to believe that this was by design. 

When Jay Jones resigned last year, he and many of the same current endorsers of Aaron Rouse endorsed Alicia Smith right out of the gate. Controversy aside, “certified doer” Jackie Glass entered the snap nominating contest and emerged victorious. The machine couldn’t overcome (now Delegate) Glass and her passionate supporters in the community.

Apparently, no lessons were learned. Or maybe one was: don’t risk an actual election.

Some of the most perverse proclivities of the Byrd Machine remain in contemporary Virginia; elected leaders play musical chairs with public office - cutting deals, cutting checks, and cutting voters out of the process.

So over the next couple of weeks, we’ll see how Turpin and disenfranchised Democrats in SD7 decide to proceed. Regardless of who becomes the Democratic nominee, regardless of who wins the special election in January, there’s tremendous value in candidates and voters speaking out. If Democrats want to be taken seriously as advocates for democracy, they need to first insist on democracy within the Democratic Party. And if Virginia is to truly overcome its anti-democratic origins, it’ll be first and foremost because everyday citizens finally decide they’ve had enough and they’re willing to do something about it.

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